Bored of your job?
The other day, my mind was wandering. I was unfocused and even sent two-three personal e-mails during office hours and surfed the net a bit. Perhaps I was bored, or was facing what is often called: Lack of job satisfaction. I did have a few mundane tasks on hand to complete, and was really not looking forward to them. Well, one of the few people whom I had emailed exhorted me to return to work. Yes, his reply was as re-sounding as the crack of a whip!
I agree that tiny breaks sometimes do help in improving productivity; the mind is refreshed and ready to conquer the toughest of puzzles. But these tiny breaks must not result in procrastination and shrugging off of responsibilities. There is a fine line between a tiny break and in putting things off, because of lack of job satisfaction. Well, I did promptly get back to work and was happy to see all items on my to-do list for the day, duly ticked off, earlier than I expected.
But this incident reminded me of a book that I am currently reading and an article that I have read a long time ago, but which is still fresh in my memory.
For more than two decades, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of ‘Flow:The psychology of optimal experience’ has studied states of optimal experiences – those times when people report feelings of concentration and deep enjoyment. These investigations have revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow – absolute absorption in an activity. This book, which I have yet to finish reading, states that flow can be controlled and not just left to chance, by setting ourselves challenges – tasks that are neither too difficult nor too simple for our abilities. With such goals, we learn to order the information that enters consciousness and thereby improve the quality of our lives.
However, I did read in the first few pages itself, an instance of an assembly line worker, Rico Medellin. The task he has to perform on each unit that passes in front of his station should take forty-three seconds to perform – the exact operation almost six hundred times in a working day. Most people would grow tired of such work very soon. But Rico has been at this job for over five years and he still enjoys it. The reason is that he approaches his task in the same way an Olympic athlete approaches his event: How can I beat my record?
In short, Rico has trained himself to better his time on the assembly line. In part he does it to earn a bonus and respect. But often he lets his success pass unnoticed. It is enough to know that he can do it, because when he is working at top performance the experience is so enthralling that it is almost painful for him to slow down.
Now I turn to this article that I read a long time ago. It is titled: Job Satisfaction by Subroto Bagchi. An extract from this article reads: Yet, there are people, who given a tough and dirty job, make it strategic: they transform the job in unbelievable ways. In a typical career span, there must be at least four such solid stints in one’s life to make the person a solid professional. All the great people I know have been in the trenches for much of their lives, and their inventory of bruises outnumber the commendations they have received. The occasional commendations stay on the wall. It is the bruises that these people carry with pride.
In other words, Rico and all these people that Subroto Bagchi refers to have more than satisfied the job. Guess, I occasionally do need to remember that it is not job satisfaction that counts, but satisfying the job.
I agree that tiny breaks sometimes do help in improving productivity; the mind is refreshed and ready to conquer the toughest of puzzles. But these tiny breaks must not result in procrastination and shrugging off of responsibilities. There is a fine line between a tiny break and in putting things off, because of lack of job satisfaction. Well, I did promptly get back to work and was happy to see all items on my to-do list for the day, duly ticked off, earlier than I expected.
But this incident reminded me of a book that I am currently reading and an article that I have read a long time ago, but which is still fresh in my memory.
For more than two decades, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of ‘Flow:The psychology of optimal experience’ has studied states of optimal experiences – those times when people report feelings of concentration and deep enjoyment. These investigations have revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow – absolute absorption in an activity. This book, which I have yet to finish reading, states that flow can be controlled and not just left to chance, by setting ourselves challenges – tasks that are neither too difficult nor too simple for our abilities. With such goals, we learn to order the information that enters consciousness and thereby improve the quality of our lives.
However, I did read in the first few pages itself, an instance of an assembly line worker, Rico Medellin. The task he has to perform on each unit that passes in front of his station should take forty-three seconds to perform – the exact operation almost six hundred times in a working day. Most people would grow tired of such work very soon. But Rico has been at this job for over five years and he still enjoys it. The reason is that he approaches his task in the same way an Olympic athlete approaches his event: How can I beat my record?
In short, Rico has trained himself to better his time on the assembly line. In part he does it to earn a bonus and respect. But often he lets his success pass unnoticed. It is enough to know that he can do it, because when he is working at top performance the experience is so enthralling that it is almost painful for him to slow down.
Now I turn to this article that I read a long time ago. It is titled: Job Satisfaction by Subroto Bagchi. An extract from this article reads: Yet, there are people, who given a tough and dirty job, make it strategic: they transform the job in unbelievable ways. In a typical career span, there must be at least four such solid stints in one’s life to make the person a solid professional. All the great people I know have been in the trenches for much of their lives, and their inventory of bruises outnumber the commendations they have received. The occasional commendations stay on the wall. It is the bruises that these people carry with pride.
In other words, Rico and all these people that Subroto Bagchi refers to have more than satisfied the job. Guess, I occasionally do need to remember that it is not job satisfaction that counts, but satisfying the job.
PS: I have now finished reading "Flow"
The rules for developing an autotelic self according to the author are:
1)Set clear goals to strive towards
2) Invest attention to the task on hand, become immersed in whatever it is that you are doing
3) Pay attention to what is happening - there should be a union of the person and the system. In other words, look beyond the self
4) Learn to enjoy the immediate experience.
Interstingly in the last chapter Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, states: To approach optimal experience as closely as is humanely possible, a last step in the control of consciousness is necessary. He cites his interactions with the implict faith in God shown by Muslim professionals from Arabia and the Gulf region. They were able to withstand strong pressure. The author adds:Such implicit faith used to be widespread in our culture as well, but it is not easy to find it now. Many of us have to discover a goal that will give meaning to life on our own, without the help of traditional faith."
So to sum it all up, satisfy the job and once you do your best, have faith in the outcome. At least this is the lesson I learnt from this book and an excellent article.
Have a nice Sunday.
4 comments:
Sometimes my whole class together will be in flow - absorption. It is those moments that bring some of my greatest joys. Oh, yes. I have much job satisfaction. I hope you are able to find more pleasure in your work.
The term "job satisfaction" itself is a contradiction. The moment you approach something as a "job", satisfaction becomes a holy grail. A job is something you do for someone else for an extraneous purpose (wages being the most tangible purpose). If doing something, and doing it well, was both the end and means, satisfaction would not beg external commendations or medals (a few pats now and then do help though!!). Job satisfaction, in my experience, is not so much linked to the nature fo work one is doing but how important and nice the person is made to feel doing that job. Here ends my limited philosophical counter-rambling.
Hello Siddhartha,
Great insights. Wish you would post on your blog, so that we could read and comment.
nice post - my thinking is that if you love what you do (or do what you love), boundaries between work and life ceases to exist. Each job has two components. The magical and the mundane. Magical moments are those when your blood rushes, you give your best and manifest yourself in your work. Mundane are those things that you need to do to satisfy your job (e.g. filling up status reports). Mundane may be a small percentage of what you do, but it still needs to be done.
Key to job satisfaction is to relish the magical - and satisfy the mundane. My $0.2.
Have a great 2009!
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